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Sadly whilst light, the relief was not instantly forthcoming. In fact I was faced with another English Rose in a cat suit off to put the world to rights. Luckily she wasn't pregnant and whilst one of her lovers was decidedly gawky there was no unconscious rape scenes or cleverly unimaginative pregnancies to be seen here. There was, however, plenty of unwarranted special effects, though this time at least they hadn't been worked at so hard at as to put you in a moral bind when you find yourself thinking how shit they are. Anyway that's enough of me picking on Tarantino's girl on a vendetta, what about Girl on a Motorcycle. Well, long before Last Tango in Paris, Electra Glide in Blue, and a little bit before Easy Rider came Girl on a Motorcycle. But try thinking of all those films, take out the sex, drugs and rock and roll, then take out the ugly actors and replace them with the beautiful Marianne Faithful and handsome Alain Delon. Finally make Marianne Faithful a young virgin discovering the divides between lust, love, marriage and motorcycles, and Alan Delon the devilishly-charming philosophy professor speeding her discoveries. Sweet, simple and unpretentious I really enjoyed this meandering journey across Alain's Europe, Marianne's body, a couple's illicit affair and a Sixties' take on sex, youth, gender and freedom. If only the psychedelia could be edited out and a little more naked Marianne edited in... Still, after watching Girl on a Motorcycle it came as no surprise to me that Jack Cardiff never really made much of himself directorially, this lacks both enough eye candy and technical expertise to be a geniune movie classic. It is, however, a cult classic and: if you think a Norton Commando is an anti-virus program; or if when you caught her in Intimacy you didn't have to pause a moment to create a second older and less perfect Marianne Faithful in your head; or you need adrenalin and steroid pumped hyper-referential blockbuster 'cult-classics-before-they're-released' kind-of-films wait for it to get aired late-night on channel 4 and fall asleep to it as you are reminded what the phrases 'down to earth' and 'real' and 'sweet' actually mean 6.5/10 (4 if the words "Marianne Faithful", "Harley-Davidson" and the tagline "She's always naked under leather" don't make you sweat like a 21st century Hobbit choosing between playing with the naked blade of a Hatori Hanzo or with its catsuited owner) S is for Serge Gainsbourg's worked on all the best girls 09/05/05
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